A Food and Drug Administration leader has abruptly quit after he claimed staff layoffs would make it impossible to do the work the Trump administration has called for.
In a letter to the FDA’s acting commissioner, Deputy Commissioner Jim Jones resigned Monday over what he said was the Trump administration’s “indiscriminate” firing of the agency’s employees, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“It has been increasingly clear that with the Trump administration’s disdain for the very people necessary to implement your agenda... it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role,” Jones said in the letter obtained by the newspaper.
Jones, who became the first deputy commissioner for human foods in 2023, said 89 of his staffers were let go, including infant formula safety experts and 10 employees who reviewed food ingredient concerns.
Jones had overseen the agency’s banning of food dye Red No. 3 earlier this year and said he “was looking forward to working to pursue the department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans.”
He expressed support of the White House’s plans to reduce “diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,” but said he wouldn’t have been able to execute the agenda given the administration’s “disdain for the very people” needed to make these changes."
His resignation comes after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in last weekthe as the nation’s new health secretary.
Kennedy has accused the agency of corruption in the past and vowed that the “FDA’s war on public health” would end when President Donald Trump took office.
“This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma,” Kennedy wrote to his X account in October. “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
Other agencies in Kennedy’s line of fire include the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), alongside the National Institutes of Health (NIH). About 750 CDC workers and between 1,000 to 1,200 NIH employees were fired over the weekend, according to NPR. The letters given to employees at the three agencies cited performance as the reason behind the firings.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January, federal workers in a multitude of agencies have been fired, for reasonings ranging from corruption to an attempt to streamline the government. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has also visited agencies to see where cuts can be made.
Other firings took place in the past days at Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Federal Aviation Association, and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Trump has said he hopes to cut out up to 10 percent of the government workforce in the U.S.
